#BookReview ; Half The Night Is Gone by Amitabha Bagchi

The celebrated Hindi novelist Vishwanath is heartbroken by the recent loss of his son in an accident. The tragedy spurs him to write a novel set in the household of Lala Motichand. It follows the lives of the wealthy lala and his three sons: Self-confident Dinanath, the true heir to Motichand’s mercantile temperament, lonely Diwanchand, uninterested in business and steeped in poetry; and illegitimate Makhan Lal, a Marx-loving schoolteacher kept to the periphery of his father’s life. In an illuminating act of self-reflection, Vishwanath, the son of a cook for a rich sethji, also tells the story of the lala’s personal servant, Mange Ram and his son, Parsadi. Fatherhood, brotherhood and childhood, love, loyalty and poetry all come to the fore as sons and servants await the lala’s death. By writing about mortality and family, Vishwanath confronts the wreckage of his own life while seeking to make sense of the new India that came into being after independence. Spellbinding and penetrating, Half the Night Is Gone raises questions of religion, literature and society that speak to our fractured times.

Half The Night Is Gone is the latest fictional novel by Amitabha Bagchi, published by Juggernaut. The author has written 3 novels, the first Above Average was a bestseller. His second novel, The Household was published to critical acclaim & the third This Place was shortlisted for the Raymond Crossword Book Award in 2014 & nominated for the Dublin IMPAC Literary Prize 2015. Bagchi lives in New Delhi with his wife & son.

Vishwanath is a celebrated Hindi novelist, Sahitya Academy Award winner & his debut novel has been adopted as a tv show, but between all this as he loses his only son to an accident & between all the internal emotional turmoil he is going through, he writes another story. This story is set in pre independence era where we follow the life & household of Lala Motichand. A wealthy merchant with 3 sons, Dinanath being the eldest he understands his responsibilities & is keen to help his father expand their business, then there’s Diwanchand who is more interested in poetry & Tulsidas’ work & lastly there’s his illegitimate son Makhan Lal who is made a schoolteacher by his father in order keep him under his supervision so that he doesn’t cause him any trouble. It also follows the story of their servant Mange Ram & his son Parsadi. Get this book here to enter into a whirlwind of emotions ready to sweep you away to the lives of Vishwanath & his characters,

Being the first book by the author that I got to read, I had no expectations or clue of his style of writing but I liked the idea of a story inside another story. All the characters whether from Vishwanath’s world or the characters he wrote about were so real that any reader would instantly be reminded of some incident or person from their lives & that according to me is a hard thing to achieve. The stories have been interwoven as Vishwanath has mirrored some parts of his life into his story making a full circle. I don’t think I have read any book which has made me cautious about the words I choose to describe it, as it is so beautifully written that it would be dishonoring the author’s work if I mistakenly choose a less perfect word for it. The story, its pace, the characters, the emotions everything is near to perfect if not perfect. The language is a bit difficult but most masterpieces are like that, the title is beautiful & its relevance can be unearthed once you’ve read the book & the cover is breathtaking. A true marvel of our times & deserves to be read.